Music Week

Rated count off this week, partly because I replayed a fair number of
2014 releases around P&J ballot time, partly because I got stuck on
re-evaluating Wadada Leo Smith's The Great Lakes Suites. To make
a long story short, I concluded that the first disc is solid A-, but I
still have some doubts about the second. I still prefer Smith's Red
Hill (and still have Smith's The Stone (Akashic Meditation)
well off the pace). The Great Lakes Suites came in a close second
in NPR's Jazz Critics Poll.

Aside from those dead spots, everything else I rated last week came
from Rhapsody (or at least the computer). I did get a comeuppance for
my excessive pride over exhausting my 2014 queue: two large packages
from Europe (France and Poland) with obscure 2014 releases, plus a
few more from domestic sources. With all the year-end polls done, I
didn't feel any rushing need to catch up. Rather, I kept on collecting
year-end list data, trying
to pick at anything I could find that seemed promising.

I totally screwed up on Twitter this past week. I may try to catch
up a bit in the next few days, but more likely I'll just try to stuff
what I can into a December 31 Rhapsody Streamnotes, then freeze the
year-end file (and deep-freeze the
2013 list). Then we will enter
2015, and again try to scale back (somewhat).

Daily Log

Comment I wrote to Facebook on P&J odds:

The leaders in my EOY list count are: FKA Twigs, War on Drugs, St
Vincent, Run the Jewels, Caribou, Aphex Twin, Swans, tie between
Flying Lotus and Sun Kil Moon. However, the P&J electorate is skewed
in various ways -- no, I don't have a mathematical model, just a bunch
of hunches -- and P&J has a later deadline than anything I've counted
so far, so my own P&J guess is Run the Jewels, followed by St Vincent,
FKA Twigs, and War on Drugs, with Aphex Twin and/or Flying Lotus
having a small chance of breaking into the top four. Taylor Swift and
Miranda Lambert will certainly do much better than my count suggests
(currently 21 and 62) -- I figure them for top-10 and top-20, but not
top-5 and top-10. (Swift has only led one list so far, vs. 4 for
Lambert.) Tune-Yards is a previous P&J winner with a strong bias, but
is 67 in my count -- I figure top-40 is likely but not certain. At
least one respected prognosticator has picked D'Angelo. I don't see
how that can happen, and doubt he'll match Beyonce's 4th place finish
last year, but top-20 is likely and top-10 not out of the question. As
I understand the rules, Beyonce will have to get more new votes this
year than she got last year, and I don't see any way that can
happen. In fact, she hasn't done very well this year even in lists
that were way too early last year to have given her a chance. (She's
only appeared on 9 of 185 lists this year, but has won three of
those.)

The songs all came from album tracks, with eight of ten on my A-list,
but only one redundant to the albums ballot. The songs are overwhelmingly
from major labels -- a testament to today's big pop production machine --
whereas the albums are more scattered (three majors, seven independents).
Four albums are jazz, but none of the singles. The albums were carefully
considered from the 1004 albums (952 new, 52 comp/archival) released in
2014 that I listened to seriously enough to grade. The songs were picked
out much more arbitrarily. Jasons Gross and Gubbels generously shared
their year-end song lists, but even after sampling a few things off the
top of each I doubt that I've heard 20% of either list (nearly all in the
context of albums, but surprisingly few appeared on albums I've heard).
I also checked out Spin's year-end list, but closed it after the
top two came nowhere close. I suspect that more digging would find a lot
of things I'd feel bad about leaving out, but the top half of the list
is likely to remain pretty solid.

The albums, of course, were much more rigorously considered. The
only one on my ballot that's likely to get more than five votes is
Wussy.[*] In my
EOY list file, Attica!
currently sits on line 347 with 6 points and only one mention so far
on a top-ten list (5th on Greg Kot's Chicago Tribune list), but
I know at least that many voters certain to vote for it. I was on the
fence myself, slightly preferring Digital Primitives' Lipsomuch/Soul
Searchin', also considering Parquet Courts' Sunbathing Animal
and Old 97's Most Messed Up, and completely forgetting about the
year's best compilation, Scratchin': The Wild Jimmy Spruill Story.
I normally pay little attention to what other people are voting for,
but it seems possible (if not exactly likely) that Wussy will sneak
into the top-40, so I felt like doing that.

On the other hand, Wussy is likely to flat out win Odyshape's
2014 EW Pazz & Jop poll, so there's less excuse voting
for it there, let alone need or value. So I'm making one change
to the ballot above for Odyshape, replacing Wussy with the Jimmy
Spruill compilation. It was, after all, an oversight, buried by
my bookkeeping system down in the reissues and vault music. Had
I thought of it before casting my P&J ballot I probably
would have included it there.

I've long hated the top-ten cutoffs, which forcibly magnify
marginal distinctions. No competent critic should be limited to
ten highly recommended records in a year. When I ran a poll
similar to Odyshape's in 2002-03, I tried to rectify this by
allowing voters to extend their ballots: records from 11-20
got three points, 21-30 got two points, and anything past 30
was given one point. The long lists had little effect on the
standings, but they added many more distinctive records to
the totals. I wish Odyshape had adopted this embellishment,
but they seem to regard P&J as some sort of holy grail.

I've found about 130 A- or higher albums this year (plus
another 200+ high B+ records, and that list -- not my top-10 --
is the real EOY list. I've split the full
EOY list into
jazz and
non-jazz parts --
about 60% of the new albums I've listened to this year were jazz,
and they were mostly heard on CD whereas the non-jazz were mostly
streamed. I don't consider compartmentalizing jazz to be either
natural or desirable, but the differences in sample size and
methodology, my status as an expert in jazz and a rank amateur
in nearly everything else (except classical, where I'm a committed
ignoramus) justifies the split.

[*] Kate Tempest's Mercury Prize-nominated album has some critical
support, but thus far it's almost exclusively in Europe. She's tied
for 56th place in my EOY count, finishing in the top 20 in 11 polls
so far, but no higher than 8th. Steve Lehman won NPR's Jazz Critics
Poll, but hardly anyone votes for jazz in P&J. Then there is Lily
Allen's major label pop record, but it only has three mentions in EOY
lists thus far, none higher than 46th. I expect it to do somewhat
better in P&J, but a breakthrough doesn't look to be in the
cards. The only other record with even one EOY list mention is Jenny
Scheinman's, with just one on an unranked country genre list.

I've been having some discussions about oddsmaking for the P&J
poll, so I thought I'd share some of that with you here. My projections
are based on two things: a fairly large amount of
aggregated EOY list data,
and some half-baked ideas about how the critics who vote in P&J
differ from my aggregate lists. The biggest difference is that P&J
voters are almost exclusively American, whereas about half of the lists
I've been counting come from elsewhere.

Music Week

With Rhapsody broken for most of the last two weeks (v. Saturday's
Condemned to Hack post), I wiped out everything that was left in
my 2014 queue, wrote up my first 2015 album, and started scrounging
through the nether regions of the unplayed queue. The three records
listed under "old music" below were actually advance copies from
2004-07, most likely unplayed because I was waiting for finals that
never came. There is a good deal more like that -- probably between
50 and 100 records, some final copies (but those are more obviously
by choice). I long prided myself on playing everything that came my
way, but evidently there were limits -- while my 2014 "pending" list
is currently (momentarily?) empty, and my 2013 was reduced to one
slab of vinyl, some earlier lists show a dozen or more records as
"pending."

Also cleaned out the Christmas records (v. yesterday's
Holiday Music Special). Chuck Powell wrote in afterwards to point
out that I "missed the only good one": John Zorn's
Dreamers Christmas. As I said, I wasn't actually searching for
"good" Christmas music; I was just cleaning house. I did have a fleeting
thought of using Rhapsody to check out some relatively current product,
but didn't have the stomach for it. (Sample titles from Billboard:
Pentatonix, That's Christmas to Me; Idina Menzel, Holiday
Wishes; Michael Buble, Christmas; Darius Rucker, Home for
the Holidays; Josh Groban, Noel; Kelly Clarkson, Wrapped
in Red; Mannheim Steamroller, 30/40; Amazon also recommends:
Ellen's The Only Holiday Album You'll Ever Need, Vol. 1 (note
contradiction); Christmas at Downton Abbey; Dave Koz &
Friends, The 25th of December; Christmas With Nashville
(the TV series, a "limited collector's edition"); Motown Christmas;
A Boston Pops Christmas.)

I also thought about rumaging through my database for previous grades,
but I don't have genres tagged so any sort of completism would have been
impossibly tedious. Still, some samples:

That's about half of the albums I've rated with "Christmas" in the
title -- not many but not nothing either; the only other one rising to
low-B+ is John Brown's Merry Christmas, Baby (2007). Someday I
might try to survey the "classics" I've missed -- James Brown, Dave
Brubeck, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Vince Guaraldi, Spike Jones,
Elvis Presley, John Prine, Mike Seeger, Frank Sinatra -- but I've
seen that Ramsey Lewis album show up in an "all-time top five" list,
and it's hard to convey just how awful it is.

With all the computer problems I've been facing the last few weeks,
I missed posting anything on the 9th Annual Jazz Critics Poll, which
Francis Davis started at the Village Voice and most recently
found a home for at NPR. A record 140 jazz critics voted this year.
The key links:

When Rob Harvilla was involved, both at the Voice and during
the poll's brief residency at Rhapsody, I was also asked to write up
my own annotated ballot, but that hasn't happened with NPR. While my
own ballot is
here, a better place to look is my still-evolving file
here. Part of the
value is that the A-list goes much deeper than top-ten: currently
I have 64 new jazz records on the list (plus 65 on the corresponding
non-jazz list).
But I also give you the complete context with lists of all the
other records I didn't think were that good. When I do my EOY list
counts, I don't stop at 10 because most of what interests me is
further down on the lists -- and frankly, I trust critics with
big lists to have done more homework (even if some of it looks
suspiciously rote).

But if I could ask one follow-up question of the voters, it
would be: which of the top-50 (or top-100) albums have you not
listened to? My answer:

Looking over this list, there are a couple items that seem like very
strong A-list candidates (Moondoc finished high on the three ballots that
named him, and they're all critics I tend to agree with; same for The
Midwest School, plus I heard a cut on bandcamp that blew me away),
plus a lot of no doubt quality records -- solid B+ fare with a chance of
being better than that. Also occurs to me that I screwed up in several
cases -- I must have received download links from Sunnyside and ECM
that I failed to act on, and I let HighNote take me off their mailing
list when I expected to write much less about jazz than I wound up
doing. On the other hand, this rather underscores the point that the
labels with good PR distribution are the ones that place in polls like
this. They don't have to be big: Pi only released five albums this
year, but they placed 1-6-14-33-54. On the other hand, major labels
Universal (Verve/Blue Note/ECM) and Sony (Okeh/Masterworks) hogged
11 of the top 20 slots. (Warner's Nonesuch had two top-50 spots at
36 and 43.) And when obscure labels do place, that's often thanks to
independent PR firms (e.g., Braithwaite & Katz helped the superb
Finnish label TUM take 2nd, but they only placed Wadada Leo Smith,
who finished 3rd and 17th the last two years; on the other hand,
Smith's other record this year, on Rare Noise (Red Hill),
wound up way down at 140th).

I should probably note that this is probably the first year since
the first poll in 2005 where my top pick was the poll's top pick.
(The winner back then was Ornette Coleman's Sound Grammar --
not a squeaker or anyone's idea of an upset.) Still, I wouldn't
read this as implying a convergence of critical opinion -- it's
just an exceptional album that hit several different pleasure
spots. My only other A-list album was the latest installment of
Sonny Rollins' Roadshows -- now that's a consensus pick!
Only one more A-list in the next ten (Vijay Iyer), two in the
following ten (Thumbscrew and Eric Revis), and three more
(Marty Ehrlich, James Brandon Lewis, Farmers by Nature) in the
top fifty (making a total of eight). There are a few things we
disagree over (I should probably recheck Akinmusire -- I was
very surprised to see his record on Davis' ballot; my recall of
what's wrong with Jason Moran's Fats Waller rehash is clearer,
and I can see that Darius Jones' The Oversoul Manual is
a love-or-hate matter), but most of the top-50 records are very
respectable efforts -- not sure how much of that to pin on my
bias towards sax over piano (lot of piano records on the list),
but I'm inclined to think that I rate those records down a bit
only because I've looked much further.

My three A- records this week are all pop, all December releases
with virtually no EOY list presence thus far. Charli XCX evidently
had some advance publicity, popping up on six lists, including 5th
place at Rolling Stone and 43rd at Spin. Nothing yet
for highly touted D'Angelo (Metacritic score is 95 for 23 reviews --
their second highest rating this year for a new record, edged out by
Machine Head's Bloodstone & Diamonds with only 5 reviews;
metal albums often have ridiculously high scores because only
metalheads can stand to review them) or for Nicki Minaj (Metacritic
71 for 22 reviews; NYT: "full of compromises and half-successes").
I found them all on Rhapsody, and connected almost instantly to
Charli XCX. On the other hand, D'Angelo got a lot of spins and is
still pretty marginal for me, although no doubt it is a very
distinctive album.

I continue to add lists into my
aggregation as I find time
(and lists). FKA Twigs maintains a small lead over War on Drugs, and
there's little reason to think the former has much of a UK bias. I have
to rate it a slight favorite to win P&J, but any of the top four
would win -- FKA Twigs, War on Drugs, St. Vincent (3), and Run the
Jewels (tied at 4 with Caribou although I'd count the latter out) --
with momentum and skew if anything favoring Run the Jewels.

File has grown to 2195 records, but that's still way short of last
year's 7867. The 157 polls is also well under half of last year's
total (not that the number for 2013 is easy to count). The leader's
current score is 148, vs. Kanye West's 356 last year. All of those
totals will wind up less than last year because I've changed the
methodology.

Pazz & Jop ballot is due December 26, so more on that then. My
guess is that about twenty voters there are heavily Christgau-influenced,
which this year can be measured by votes for Wussy, Withered Hand, and
Black Portland -- very little support for any of those albums
elsewhere (current scores: Black Portland 8, Wussy 6, Withered
Hand 5). I'll post another Rhapsody Streamnotes by the end of the month,
but probably not next week.

New records rated this week:

Dean Blunt: Black Metal (2014, Rough Trade): more of a left-field IDM guy, but looking for dramatic gestures, or maybe just a product niche [r]: B+(*)

Holiday Music Special

Many years ago I read that Christmas music outsells jazz -- a
factoid that helped harden a prejudice against the stuff into a
grudge. There are objectively worse things about the music, like
the compulsions retailers feel to play it nonstop during the four
(or more) weeks of the "season," as if doing so triggers Pavlovian
reflexes to spend. I get some quantity of it every year. Sometimes
I review it and pack it away, but mostly it piles up, and I have
way too much of that. So this year I'm making an effort to clear
the decks. Hopefully this won't encourage anyone to send me more
next year.

Eddie Allen: Jazzy Brass for the Holidays (2009,
DBCD): Actually no name credit on the cover, but Allen is the
leader and arranger, plays trumpet along with Cecil Bridgewater,
and is backed by French horn, trombone, bass, and drums. Song
selection so standard it could be a high school assignment. Not
sure if stating the head then improvising off it works as jazz
but it does break the holiday tedium.
B-

Chris Bauer: In a Yuletide Groove: Harmonica Jazz for the
Holidays (2011, self-released): "Seydel harmonica artist,"
has two albums, the other Straight Ahead. Quintet with keybs,
guitar, bass, and drums, plus a guest vocal from producer Rob
Poparozzi. Standards, favors pop like "Frosty the Snowman" and
"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" but works in "My Favorite Things"
and "Ave Maria." The very definition of chintzy, but the harmonica
is a versatile lead instrument.
B- [cd]

Alexis Cole: The Greatest Gift: Songs of the Season
(2009, Motéma): A jazz singer with at least eight albums I've never
heard, credits this "with family & friends" and throws in a plug
for World Bicycle Relief. The friends include some names I've heard
of (Don Braden, Alan Ferber, Jon Cowherd, Ike Sturm, Zach Brock).
Climactic pop move: "Jesus is the best part of Christmas/365 days
a year/Jesus is here."
C+ [cd]

Nathan Eklund: Craft Christmas (2011 [2012], OA2):
Trumpet player, leads a basic keyboard-bass-drums quartet, song credits
range from Trad. to Guaraldi with one original. The trumpet leads are
eloquent, but the two vocals detract.
B- [cd]

Tobias Gebb Presents Trio West: Plays Holiday Songs,
Vol. 2 (2009, Yummy House): Drummer-led piano trio, with
Eldad Zvulun on piano and Meal Miner on bass. Short song list,
but several tunes get two passes, with "We Three Kings" recast
as a waltz, "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World" done in samba,
and "O Tannenbaum" in funk and salsa variants.
B [cd]

Milt Hinton/Ralph Sutton/Gus Johnson/Jim Galloway: The Sackville
All Star Christmas Record (1986 [2014], Sackville/Delmark): Bass,
piano, drums, soprano sax, listed roughly in what I take to be the rank
order of their fame, although Galloway -- the only one still alive -- is
a first-rate trad jazz player. (Or maybe it's just left-to-right to caption
the cover picture.) Standard fare, not as rowdy as you'd hope -- seductively
subtle, even.
B+(*) [cd]

The Hot Club of San Francisco: Hot Club Cool Yule
(2009, Azica): Group -- motto is "What Would Django Do?" -- has a
dozen albums since 1993. Violin leads over the guitars, sometimes
slipping into something pleasantly innocuous, but the guest vocals
snap you back, even on the generic "Baby It's Cold Outside."
B- [cd]

Knoxville Jazz Orchestra: Christmas Time Is Here
(2012, self-released): A full-fledged big band, arranged and conducted
by Vance Thompson, also listed as fifth trumpet. More listenable than
most, at least until they add the choir(s).
B- [cd]

Elisabeth Lohninger Band: Christmas in July (2011,
JazzSick): Singer, has an appealing voice ready to swing and fluent
in uncounted languages, backed by Axel and Walter Fischbacher (guitar
and piano). Twelve songs from nearly as many countries, with a Mel
Tormé tune from the US and "Stille Nacht" from Austria.
B+(*) [cd]

Eugene Marlow's Heritage Ensemble: Celebrations
(2010, MEII Enterprises): Subtitle "interprets festive melodies
from the Hebraic songbook," so not our usual Xmas album, but it
does start with "Chanukah, O Chanukah." Pianist Marlow is a New
York Jew who specializes in Afro-Cuban/salsa/bossa nova and his
group spreads out the ethnic polyculture, including the marvelous
Michael Hashim on sax. Ends with a 6:37 lecture on philosophy
that bears repeating.
A- [cd]

Ellis Marsalis: A New Orleans Christmas Carol
(2011, ELM): A pianist from New Orleans, anyway, although not one
particularly noted for the style. The patriarch of the Marsalis
clan, his jazz career only emerging after his sons became famous,
he decorates the usual tunes with marching drums, son Jason's
vibes, and two singers I've already forgotten.
B- [cd]

Will Scruggs Jazz Fellowship: Song of Simeon: A Christmas
Journey (2012, self-released): Scruggs, from Atlanta, plays
tenor and soprano sax, called his first album Jazz Fellowship
and kept that as his group name. He explains: "Using ancient canticles,
hymns, and folk melodies, I chose eleven pieces to formulate a layered
chronology that illustrates the profound, spiritual mystery of the
radical biblical story of the birth of Christ." Sounds ambitious, and
I enjoyed the absence of trad Xmas fare . . . until it got woven in.
B [cd]

Donna Singer with the Doug Richards Trio: Kiss Me Beneath
the Mistletoe (2012, Emerald Baby): About half originals,
mostly co-credited to husband Roy Singer (assume he's the uncredited
duet partner on two songs), and I must admit I was touched by bassist
Richards' song about leaving donuts for Santa Claus. The other half
is split between spirituals and classic fluff like "Let It Snow"
with something of a fetish for mistletoe.
B [cd]

The United States Air Force Band: Cool Yule (2009,
self-released): Big band, plus strings, some extras like oboe, a
female vocal trio called the "Andrews Sisters" (quotes included), and
a male barbershop quartet called the "Crew Chiefs" (again, quotes
obligatory). Makes you wonder if they hadn't faked the death of Glenn
Miller and kept him working at some "dark site" all these years. I'm
tempted to slag them on principle, but frankly they could keep this
band running for decades for less than a single F-35, and it would be
a better use of the money. Highlight: the cha-cha "Auld Lang Syne"
(and yes, that's as good as they get).
B [cd]

Ezra Weiss: Alice in Wonderland: A Jazz Musical (2009,
Northwest Childrens Theater and School): Been sitting on this, something
I'd never expect to have any interest in, and still don't. But the story
has a few touchstones I recognize -- mad hatters and decapitating queens
and such -- and the music is not without interest.
B [cd]

Condemned to Hack

As I've mentioned several times recently, Rhapsody recently
introduced a new website design. This depends on Adobe's execrable
Flash product for streaming music -- I'm not sure that is new but this
is the first time I noticed a dependency. I've been running Rhapsody
reliably on Ubuntu Linux, on a system which is up-to-date (14.04
LTS). The new website initially worked on this machine, but when I did
a routine Ubuntu update it broke, giving me an error message that I
must have Flash installed and enabled, and a URL to Adobe to "Get
Flash." I spent many hours trying to figure this out, and probably
made things worse along the way. Long story short, I finally got it
working tonight. Still, the results are troublesome. Let me
explain.

Flash (or Shockwave Flash) is proprietary (non-free) software
developed and maintained by Adobe. It consists of an authoring
product, which Adobe makes money on, and a player, which Adobe
distributes without charge (but also without source code). Since only
Adobe can compile the source code, they can choose which platforms
they want to support. For a long time, they supported Linux, but in
2012 they decided to freeze Linux development at release 11.2.
(They've since moved on to release 16.0 for Microsoft and Apple.)
If you use Firefox go to Adobe's download website from a Linux
machine, they offer you version 11.2.202.425 in various package
formats. For Ubuntu you want "APT for Ubuntu 10.4+" -- Ubuntu, by the
way, has since moved on to 14.04. When you click on the "Download"
button, Firefox invokes the Ubuntu Software Manager to handle the
package, which is identified as "adobe-flashplugin."

As I understand it, the "adobe-flashplugin" package doesn't
actually include the Flash Player binary. What happens is that when
you install the installer, it goes out to get the program(s) to be
installed -- a bit of indirection which keeps Adobe's "crown jewels"
separate from the software depositories which are used to install
Linux systems. One problem here is that "adobe-flashplugin" winds
up installing a slightly earlier Flash Player version (11.2.202.359)
than the one advertised. That is most likely Adobe's bug. What makes
this worse is that Firefox has been configured to automatically
disable old versions of plugins that are believed to have security
risks, and the version installed is one of those. I don't know whether
the real latest version (.425) would be acceptable to Firefox. I do
know that when Firefox offers a link to "Update" the offending plugin,
it steers you back to Adobe's website, which gives you the wrong
version again. I also know that it takes some twiddling to reinstall
Adobe's "adobe-flashplugin" since Ubuntu's Software Center thinks
it's already installed and up-to-date (you have to remove it then
re-install it). Finally, you have to tell Firefox to allow the website
to use Flash despite the security risks. (Hopefully, this is website
specific, so you're not opening up a security hole for other
websites.)

Now, all that's bad enough, but I had several other problems I had
to figure out before I could get the above procedure to work. Linux
people never have liked Flash -- even back when it was the only way
to stream video and audio over the web, it was buggy, mysterious, and
couldn't be fixed. So there have been many efforts to first emulate
and eventually to supersede Flash. One hint I found was that Firefox
was showing two Shockwave Flash plugins -- the 11.2.202.359 installed
by Adobe (when I was expecting -.425), and another at 13.1.2.3 from
some mysterious source. Firefox allows you to disable plugins but not
to uninstall them, but I didn't get any different results from Rhapsody
when I alternately disabled one or the other plugin. Finally, I took
a look through the package list and uninstalled everything that looked
like it had to do with Flash: namely, I removed flashplugin-installer,
pepperflashplugin-nonfree and freshplayer-plugin, they verified that
Firefox had no Flash plugins. Then I repeated the installation from
Adobe, restarted Firefox, called up Rhapsody, and told Firefox to let
me use the insecure Flash plugin. Finally, it worked.

No sooner than I got Rhapsody working again, I ran into another nasty
bug. I haven't had time to comment on Francis Davis' 9th Annual Jazz
Critics Poll, lately sponsored by
NPR, because I've been preoccupied working on my piece of the project,
which you can find
here. I managed to get
all the ballots counted and cross-checked by 4AM Thursday morning -- the
schedule was to go live sometime Thursday but NPR didn't actually get
their end together until Friday morning. However, I spent all of my time
looking at my private copy of the website, and didn't notice that when
I uploaded the code things broke. What happened was that any string with
accented characters -- artist names like Miguel Zenón (11th) or album
titles like David Virelles' Mbókó (14th) -- simply vanished. So
I had to figure this out, and fix it.

Turns out that my working machine was running PHP 5.3 while the
server is running PHP 5.4. One huge difference between the two is that
in 5.4 the lords of PHP decided to make UTF-8 the default character
set, replacing the default ISO-8859-1, which all of my data is encoded
in. I've been a stickler about accents ever since college, when one
of the jobs I had working on Paul Piccone's Telos was to go
through the typeset galleys and use presstype to add the missing
diacritical marks. When I later worked for typesetting equipment
manufacturers, I specified the unified multilingual font package at
Varityper, and I worked on a Japanese typesetter at Compugraphic.
I later internationalized the prepress software package developed
at Contex, and oversaw localization of the software for France.
I saw aware of Unicode almost from the start, and I knew the guy
at SCO who invented UTF-8. So in some sense I always understood
that Unicode and its UTF-8 encoding would become the standard for
character encoding, I found ISO-8859-1 sufficient for my own work,
adopted it early, and have steadfastly stuck with it.

That's caused me increasing aggravation the last few years.
I use emacs to edit my files, and it's long worked very nicely
with ISO-8859-1, but it switched allegiance to UTF-8 a few years
back, and that's caused me all sorts of problems. In fact, when
I discovered this problem, the first thing I suspected was that
emacs had saved the files using UTF-8. I've also seen MySQL move
from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8, but a simple configuration switch has
allowed me to keep using ISO-8859-1 data for Robert Christgau's
website. I spent hours looking for a similar configuration hack
to keep PHP 5.4 from breaking not just the new code but lots of
old code. While I found several candidates, I couldn't get any
of them to work. Ultimately I fixed the problem by writing a
wrapper for PHP's htmlentities() function, which when run under
5.4 would pass extra arguments to specify ISO-8859-1 encoding.
That's not the limit of the changes, but it's the one function
that I was using that was blowing up.

I've since gone back and applied this fix to the totals and
ballots from 2011-13. I still need to look at 2009-10, but they
are undoubtedly broken too. Updates are always a tough decision:
they interrupt your regular work and often break things. As I
said above, I have one Ubuntu machine that is up-to-date (the
one that Rhapsody broke on), and another that is way out of
date (the one with PHP 5.3). I've been meaning to upgrade the
latter for some time -- mostly because Firefox has bugs handling
Javascript, and those result in my browser crashing a couple
times a week. (Hopefully a newer version will work better.) On
the other hand, upgrading is going to be arduous. (It involves
hopping through several Ubuntu releases, and any one of those
hops could leave me broken, so I first need to back up all of
my data -- and in this case there's a lot of that.) They I'll
have to deal with software changes like PHP 5.4 (actually, more
like PHP 5.6). Then I'll have the problem that I'll be ahead of
the target servers for my websites. (That may be the point when
I finally have to migrate tomhull.com to a new server.)

What was that line from The Godfather they liked to
quote on The Sopranos? Something about trying to break
out of the family business and go legit, then getting dragged
back in. Looks like I'm still periodically condemned to hack.

Music Week

Pretty well sandbagged at the moment. I got a very late start on
my bit posting the ballots for Francis Davis' Jazz Critics Poll (at
NPR again this year -- at least the top of the charts and Davis'
year-end summary essay). I've been bedeviled by computer problems,
and they've wiped out my ability to play Rhapsody in my office.
I've spent a lot of time trying to debug that, and won't bore you
with details now, but I believe Rhapsody is culpable both for a
glaring strategic error -- why adopt proprietary Adobe software
when HTML 5 eliminates most of its previous utility, and Firefox's
developers would rather implement the HTML spec than try to figure
out how to contain Flash's bugs? -- as well as a detection bug
(i.e., they think Flash isn't available when it is). Anyhow,
screws me over big time -- although I did manage to get through
Leonard Cohen's Live in Dublin on my Chromebook.

Much of what's listed below appeared in last week's
Rhapsody Streamnotes,
so shouldn't be new. I had missed a lot of tweets at that time,
and haven't fully caught up. Last couple days, without Rhapsody,
I decided to slog through my Xmas music queue -- much of which
dates from 2009. I'm not going to bother to tweet on them -- they
aren't timely, and they aren't much good. I'll probably run them
as a separate post later this week, then archive them with the
next RS column. Looking at the database there are a few items I
haven't found yet, but really who cares how bad Anita Baker's
Christmas Fantasy is, let alone Putumayo Presents
Christmas Around the World? My main motivation has been to
get them out of the queue and packed away safely out of sight.
Oddly enough, I did find one good record in the batch, but its
only holidays concession is to start out with "Chanukah, O
Chanukah." On the other hand, I can say that the albums aren't
as dreadful as I had feared.

One other note: I mentioned some average times for adding new
records to my year-end lists after having to cast some ballot.
Following the deadline for the Jazz Critics Poll, it took me less
than a day to find another A-list record, and little more than
a week to find one that would have cracked my top ten. Both
figures are less than half of previous medians. Of course, if
you want the real Dudu Pukwana, the record to seek out is In
the Townships (1973). The new Duduvudu is a little
messier, a little more in-your-face, but I don't mind that at
all.

Daily Log

So much hassle to post a personal note these days I might as well just
keep it in the notebook. (No idea who else reads this, but at least it's
available.)

Cooked dinner tonight for Marry Harren, Russ and Zhanna. Close enough
to Hannukah for lattkes, served with store-bought sour cream and homemade
apple sauce. I salted a piece of red trout (looked much better than the
salmon in the store). Also made Ottolenghi's chopped liver. (I looked at
Ottolenghi's lattke recipe but decided to go with something more basic:
six baking potatoes, two onions, three eggs (plus three egg whites I had
left over from elsewhere), salt, pepper. Also made a cucumber salad with
vinegar, sour cream, a bit of sugar. Also served some herring bits in
wine sauce. For dessert, made rice kugel. One of the variants was to add
raisins soaked in rum. Don't seem to have any rum, but I did manage to
soak some golden raisins in amaretto. One of those dinners where I miss
most of the conversation because I'm still cooking. Had half-again as
many lattkes left over as were eaten. Hard to see how anything could
have been improved on. Frying -- started with three pans then cut down
to two -- was as straightforward and clean as ever.

The dinner was a nice diversion from the rest of the day. I was up
late last night trying to debug the Rhapsody problem. Rhapsody has a
new website design, based on using Flash as the streaming transport.
Adobe has stopped supporting Flash on Linux, deadending at release
11, but has moved on to release 16 on Windows and Apple. When Rhapsody
doesn't see the Flash it wants it directs you to Adobe's website to
"get Flash" -- for Linux that offers you release 11. Following Adobe's
instructions didn't initially work -- I had to enable some new source
respositories for non-free software. Firefox, meanwhile, had decided
that Flash 11 has security flaws so it automatically disables it.
Meanwhile, Ubuntu has come up with a version 13 of Flash that fixes
those security holes, but isn't accepted by Rhapsody.

Some time ago, I build a computer and had Windows Vista installed
on it, and I used it mostly for watching DVDs and listening to music.
It crapped out over a year ago, following one of Microsoft's automatic
updates, and has been dormant since. I thought about replacing it with
a newer machine, but in the meantime tried to see how far I could go
with a spare Linux machine. That meant loading a bunch of proprietary
audio/video drivers, but until this week's Rhapsody update things had
worked out nicely. That in turn pretty much eliminated any desire I
had to ever own another Microsoft machine. But Rhapsody has been a
big part of my music writing, and now I'm stuck. Moreover, it's
probably a stupid coding error on Rhapsody's part, rather than their
choice to use Flash (although I certainly disapprove of that) or
Adobe's planned obsolescence or Ubuntu's (or Firefox's) inability
to manage the plugin.

I did verify today that my Chromebook can still stream music from
Rhapsody through the new web interface. I've seen claims that Chrome
has Flash built-in so if you get the one, you automatically get the
other covered. Last night I tried installing Chrome (also Chromium,
a free source repackaging of Chrome) on my Ubuntu music machine, but
had no luck with Rhapsody. Digging deeper into the issue I see lots
of squabbles. The old Netscape plugin interface is called NPAPI, and
it makes it easy for plugins to crash the browser. Adobe, which as
far as I can tell has historically been the chief caues of all those
crashes, doesn't like NPAPI. They want to use PPAPI, which provides
a sandbox mechanism to prevent crashes, so they decided to throw
their weight around and discontinue NPAPI plugins (e.g., Firefox).
Firefox, on the other hand, regards PPAPI as a waste of time. They
have what they regard as a better solution to Flash crashes, which
is to implement all the things you used to have to use Flash for
as built-in features of HTML 5. Adobe doesn't like that because if
their customers started writing proper HTML 5 code they wouldn't
need Flash. So why does Rhapsody need Flash? Seems super-dumb.

Meanwhile, I'm having other problems with my flagship computer.
Currently, the window manager is wedged, so it's impossible to
restore a window that has been minimized. I've seen it get in that
state once before. Rebooting will fix it, but I have tons of work
open that I'd have to reconstruct. Alternatively, I have work in
minimized windows that I can't get to. I figure I'll bite the bullet
later tonight. Shouldn't be any risk, but the Ubuntu software on
this machine is already way out of date, and the upgrade path will
be treacherous -- so that looms as the larger problem.

Rhapsody Streamnotes (December 2014)

Music Week

Thinking about year-end lists, which has meant a mad rush to sample
as much reputable but unheard music as possible. That in turn has led
to the huge number of new A- records pictured to the right. Unfortunately,
virtually none of them come off of the upper reaches of published lists --
the sole exception is Kate Tempest's Everybody Down, briefly in
the top-20 of my
metacritic aggregate file
but totally unknown outside of the UK and currently tied for 44th. My
other list-based find is Call Super's Suzi Ecto, a techno album
that topped the list at Juno Plus but has yet to appear on a second
list. Even the two records that I had previously panned but this week
regraded just above the A-/B+ line, Withered Hand's New Gods
and Young Thug/Bloody Jay's Black Portland, have fewer points
in my aggregate (2 and 1 respectively) -- this after looming large
in Odyshape's
Mid-Year Report (Withered Hand won; Black Portland, which
Christgau has dubbed "the rap album of the year," came in 8th on points,
tied with Miranda Lambert's Platinum).

I'll also point out that my own favorite album this year, Lily Allen's
Sheezus (which finished 4th in Odyshape) is also stuck with a
single aggregate point (The Telegraph ranked it 47). As I proceed,
I fold all the new records into my
jazz and
non-jazz year-end lists --
the former currently lists 62 A/A- albums, the latter 61. There are 95
lists in the current aggregate file, but very few even touch on much less
specialize in jazz -- although it's worth noting that my jazz favorite,
Steve Lehman's Mise en Abime, is currently leading the jazz subset
by a nice margin (7-to-4 for BadBadNotGood). In previous years, I used to
be able to find many jazz critics' lists at JJA, but they don't seem to
be doing that today. (Also slowing me down is that Large Hearted Boy has
stopped posting his invaluable list index.) Nor have I seen the results
from Francis Davis' Jazz Critics Poll (which I've collated in past years
and presumably will again this year). Looks like I'll have to start
scouring the blogs. (I did just add Tim Niland's ballot, and have just
found one from Lyn Horton.)

One thing that should be clear is that the top totals are no guarantee
of quality. I've heard the top 19 records, so I'll list them here with my
grade in brackets (and points in braces):

{88} The War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian) [***]

{76} FKA Twigs: LP1 (Young Turks) [B]

{73} St Vincent: St Vincent (Loma Vista/Republic) [***]

{63} Caribou: Our Love (Merge) [**]

{57} Beck: Morning Phase (Capitol) [B-]

{55} Future Islands: Singles (4AD) [*]

{53} Sun Kil Moon: Benji (Caldo Verde) [***]

{52} Sharon Van Etten: Are We There (Jagjaguwar) [B-]

{51} Angel Olsen: Burn Your Fire for No Witness (Jagjaguwar) [*]

{50} Aphex Twin: Syro (Warp) [A-]

{50} El-P/Killer Mike: Run the Jewels 2 (Mass Appeal) [**]

{49} Damon Albarn: Everyday Robots (Parlophone) [*]

{48} Flying Lotus: You're Dead (Warp) [**]

{47} Mac DeMarco: Salad Days (Captured Tracks) [B]

{47} Swans: To Be Kind (Young God, 2CD) [B]

{42} Jack White: Lazaretto (Third Man) [B-]

{39} Todd Terje: It's Album Time (Olsen) [A-]

{38} Perfume Genius: Too Bright (Matador) [B]

{37} Real Estate: Atlas (Domino) [**]

That works out to 2 A-, 4 ***, 3 **, 3 *, 4 B, 3 B-; which is to say
that quality on the list is little better than random. Of course you
probably disagree with some (or many) of my judgments here. (Michael
Tatum, who correlates with me better than most, had Jack White at A-
and Todd Terje at C+.) But odds are that if you have heard 300+ albums
this year -- my non-jazz count is currently 322; my jazz count is 563 --
and weren't so sectarian you'd dismiss most of these records a priori
you'd come up with a similar range. And the pattern would most likely
repeat on down the list, albeit with diminishing returns as the records
become ever more obscure (and things like jazz, country, world, and
metal creep in).

The list of records I've heard breaks at 20-21 with Ty Segall and
Taylor Swift -- neither on Rhapsody, and then there's another gap at
24-25 for Royal Blood and Goat (records I haven't bothered to look up).
From there on down to about 150 I've heard about half, and my share
thins out past there. Conversely, about one third (20) of my 61 A/A-
non-jazz albums have no points so far. Eleven more have 1 point, so
that covers the median. (I haven't figured my own list in yet, nor
that of many similar-minded critics.) My list sorted by aggregate
score:

The number of EOY lists are likely to nearly double next week, but
I don't see a lot of trends in the data. The top five have been very
stable (once St. Vincent overcame a shaky start). I don't put
a lot of weight on differences in rank -- most lists are graded 3 for
1st place, 2 for 2-20, and 1 for everything else -- so nothing much
changes with lists that include all of the top five (which is to say
most of them). I'm personally much more interested in what shows up
on the margins (again, see that Call Super album): that's why I count
everything and don't weigh it much.

You can compare this with the top-ten-only aggregates at places like
Metacritic if you want to focus on rank. The big gainers there are
Run the Jewels (11-to-4), Taylor Swift (21-to-8), and La Roux (42-to-18),
and those will definitely do better at P&J than in my aggregate. (The
largest loser is probably Sun Kil Moon, dropping 7-to-12.)

I should be running December's first Rhapsody Streamnotes later this
week. Draft file is pretty huge. Two things I wanted to do won't happen
this time: one is to clear my queue of Xmas music (didn't happen because
I can't stand the stuff); the other is to look at the "deluxe editions"
that dominate major label reissues, using Rhapsody to program out the
core albums so I just listen to the ephemera. I was originally thinking
I'd like to sort through the Led Zeppelin reissues, but there are many
more like that. Maybe next time, closer to Xmas. Or maybe next year.

One final announcement is that I'd like to invite you to take a look
at Carola Dibbell's
new website. It's more focused
on her forthcoming novel, The Only Ones, than on her superb music
writing, but there are links back to her "corner" of Robert Christgau's
website. Right now it's sort of a three-headed hybrid, but in the
not-too-distant future I hope to integrate it better stylistically.
Let me also note that my wife has read the novel and thinks it's
really terrific. Plenty of places you can order a copy. (I haven't
read it, but I haven't read any novel since Tom Carson's Gilligan's
Wake -- had to since he practically wrote it for me.)

Weekend Roundup

I've been meaning on writing something about justice, the lack of
it, or the insane perversion of it within the US, but I wanted to
start off with a quote and can't find the book. In fact, I can't
find most of the things I look for these days: the place is a total
mess, and getting oppressively so. Don't even know where to start
sorting it out. So I figured I'd skip the links post today, then
found a couple already tucked away in the draft file. So it seems
like I can't even follow a plan on not doing something any more.

Another thing I've been thinking about is coming up with a more
systematic piece on "the four wars of 2014" -- Israel/Gaza, Syria,
Iraq, and Ukraine -- and how they are mutually reinforcing, mostly
due to delusions prevalent in Washington these days (some examples
of which follow).

Anyhow, shorter and more scattered than I'd like, but more than
I expected.

Thomas Frank: Ann Coulter and David Brooks play a sneaky, unserious
class card: As I understand Brooks' post-Ferguson spin (hat tip
here to
No More Mister Nice Blog), nobody (on the right, anyway) is a
racist any more, but good conservatives do practice something he
calls "classism" -- i.e., they do look down on lazy people whose
lack of responsibility and work ethic have resulted in their being
poor and miserable. That, of course, is a spin on reality. The fact
is that conservatives encourage their followers to believe such
things, and some poor whites are flattered, ignorant, and gullible
enough to do so. Frank then tries to link this up with some of
Coulter's nonsense, quoting her:

Liberals thrive on the attractions of snobbery. Only when you appreciate
the powerful driving force of snobbery in the liberals' worldview do all
their preposterous counterintuitive arguments make sense. They promote
immoral destructive behavior because they are snobs, they embrace
criminals because they are snobs, they oppose tax cuts because they
are snobs, they adore the environment because they are snobs.

Now, I remember practically the very day in 7th grade when my
classmates discovered the word "snob" and it spread like a virus as
an all-purpose epithet to shame anyone you had any sort of complaint
about. It works, of course, because the only mutually agreeable
relationships are based on equality, and it did tend to level the
field -- although one soon came to suspect that the ones who led
the charge had the most to hide. (And if that suggests that Coulter
never really grew out of 7th grade, well, the foo shits.) The fact
is, I never knew any real snobs until I went to an expensive private
college -- and even that was muted because, after all, I was one of
them. Still, nothing in Coulter's paragraph makes any sense. There
are lots of things that snobs think and do differently from the rest
of us, but none of them made Coulter's list. Frank tries to join the
two quotes around "embracing criminals," but that's overwhelmed by
the negatives: Brooks seems to be thinking that it's OK to generalize
from criminals to class they frequent, while Coulter is generalizing
from criminals to the snobs (i.e., liberals) who "embrace" them. And
once you criminalize someone, you can never punish them too much.

When Democrats finally get over the impulse to deny and prevaricate
and blame others, and instead ask where they themselves went wrong,
one place they might begin is their beloved issue of free trade.
Take NAFTA, the granddaddy of all trade agreements, whose twentieth
anniversary we celebrated this year: There has never been a more
obviously class-based piece of legislation. It was supported with
uncanny unanimity by members of the commentariat and the professional
class, and, indeed, it has worked well for such people. For members
of the working class, however, it has been precisely the disaster
their organizations predicted.

The deal crushed enthusiasm for the Democratic Party among the
working-class voters who were then considered part of the Democratic
base and contributed to the Democrats' loss of the House of
Representatives in 1994, a disaster from which, the economist Jeff
Faux wrote in 2006, "the Democratic Party still has not recovered."
And, indeed, from which the party seemingly has no desire to recover.
Just the other day, President Obama announced that he is fired up
and ready to go . . . with the Republicans in Congress on the Trans
Pacific Partnership, even though much of his own party is opposed
to it.

Democrats who sign up for our master class on classism might also
look back over their response to the financial crisis, during which
they bailed out their BFFs on Wall Street and let everyone else go
to hell. Or the many favors they failed to do for their former BFFs
in organized labor. Or their lack of interest in getting a public
option included in health-care reform.

Simon Maloy: "A fan of blowing things up": Why new DefSec nominee Ashton
Carter was ready to restart Korean War: Not a huge surprise that
Obama's pick to replace Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense is a hawk
more committed to the military than to democracy, but it's hard to
imagine a more vivid example of his myopia than his cavalier attitude
toward bombing North Korea. If there's anything one should have learned
from studying wars throughout history it's that you never can predict
all the consequences. Still, Carter thinks the US can blow up a working
nuclear reactor without causing it to malfunction, melt down, explode,
and spread toxic radiation. He also thinks that North Korea wouldn't
retaliate for such an attack, even though their main defense against
US attack for more than 60 years has been the deterrence of their
artillery pointed at Seoul. And in any case he thinks that the many
thousands of Koreans who would die from that test of will are a small
price compared to the risk that North Korea might eventually possess
nuclear weapons and long-range missiles (which, by the way, they now
do, and like most nations with such arms do nothing with). In other
words, Carter is not just the wrong person to become Secretary of
Defense; he probably ought to be packed away to a mental ward
somewhere. (It goes without saying that he's already been endorsed
by Lindsay Graham and Donald Rumsfeld.) Another example of how
Obama's "changing the way we think about war"?

These are the kinds of resolutions I have always watched closely in
Congress, as what are billed as "harmless" statements of opinion often
lead to sanctions and war. I remember in 1998 arguing strongly against
the Iraq Liberation Act because, as I said at the time, I knew it would
lead to war. I did not oppose the Act because I was an admirer of Saddam
Hussein -- just as now I am not an admirer of Putin or any foreign
political leader -- but rather because I knew then that another war
against Iraq would not solve the problems and would probably make
things worse. We all know what happened next.

Nathan Thrall: Rage in Jerusalem: Useful background about Jerusalem,
the center of the ad hoc violence that threatens a "third intifada," how
the expanded-and-annexed city's 30% Palestinian minority has been isolated
and estranged by the political system.

Palestinians in general feel disconnected from their political leaders,
but the sense of abandonment is particularly acute in Jerusalem, where
the PA is strictly forbidden from acting and to which Ramallah, like
most of the Arab world, devotes many lofty words but very few deeds.
When he assented to the five-year interim arrangements for Palestinian
self-governance in the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat agreed to exclude
Jerusalem from the areas that would be governed pro tempore by the PA.
Local leaders, notably the late Faisal Husseini, refused to agree to
this, which is one reason Yitzhak Rabin, who resolutely opposed dividing
Jerusalem when he was prime minister and said he would rather abandon
peace than give up a united capital, chose to bypass Husseini and
instead pursued secret negotiations in Oslo with Arafat's emissaries.

Palestinians in Jerusalem have been bereft of political leaders since
Husseini's death in 2001. All four of Jerusalem's representatives in the
Palestinian parliament -- all of them members of Hamas, elected in 2006 --
have been deported. Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, monitors
'political subversion,' which includes lawful opposition to the Israeli
occupation. Since all Palestinian political parties oppose the occupation,
they and their activities have, in effect, been criminalised. Even innocuous
Palestinian institutions such as the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce have been
shut down. Years of Israeli suppression of Palestinian political activity
have ensured that when violence erupts in Jerusalem, there is no legitimate
leadership to quell it; and spontaneous, unorganised protests and attacks
are far more difficult for the security forces to thwart and contain.

More Israel links:

Philip Weiss: Lieberman unveils racist peace plan: Pay Palestinians to
leave Israel: First point here is that he's talking about Israel's
so-called "Arab citizens": a 15-20% minority within the Green Line and
not a peace problem despite their de facto second class status. The much
larger problem is Israel's occupation of territories beyond the Green
Line where Palestinians are a huge (and in many cases severely oppressed)
majority. Their disposition either pushes the price tag up enormously
or turns Lieberman's "economic incentives" into something more ominous.
Still, the focus on Israel's "Arab citizens" is plenty ominous already:
this and the new "Nationality Law" (supported by Lieberman) suggest that
many right-wing Jews in Israel are unable to tolerate the presence of
any ethnic or religious minority.

Allison Deger: Palestinian flag is an 'enemy'flag' -- Netanyahu's latest
crackdown: His proposed law will allow Israel to strip citizenship rights
and exile to Gaza any "Arab citzens of Israel" who engage in "terrorism or
encitement" -- the latter includes flying a Palestinian flag. As Netanyahu
explains, in Israel "only the Jewish People have national rights: A flag,
anthem, the right of every Jew to immigrate to the country, and other
national symbols."

Only US and Israel Oppose UN Ban on Weapons in Outer Space: OK,
the US I can understand: that's the only country in the world that
fully expects to be able to bomb anywhere in the world any time it
takes a hankering to. Moreover, the only country with the resources
to waste on that nonsense. (Although China is known to have technology
to shoot down satellites, just in case it needs to level the playing
field.) But Israel? You'd think they'd think the only reason anyone
would position weapons in space would be to kill Jews, wouldn't
you?

Also, a few links for further study:

Adam Shatz: West End Boy: Reviews two books on the rise of
Islamophobia in Europe, specifically focusing on Anders Breivik's
2011 bombing and killing spree in Norway.

Your top-three Reissues or Historical albums, again in descending
order:

Ted Daniel's Energy Module: Interconnection (1975, NoBusiness, 2CD)

Sun Ra & His Arkestra: In the Orbit of Ra (1957-78, Strut, 2CD)

The Buddy Tate Quartet: Texas Tenor (1978, Sackville/Delmark)

Your choice for the year's best Vocal album:

Barbara Morrison: I Love You, Yes I Do (Savant)

Your choice for the year's best Debut album:

Velkro: Don't Wait for the Revolution (Clean Feed)

Your choice for the year's best Latin jazz album:

none

I think I voted for Ivo Perelman under Latin jazz last year. He's
from Brazil, ergo Latin, but plays free jazz, so not what you'd recognize
as Latin jazz. I also have a few A-list players from Spain and Portugal
(Ridrigo Amado, Luis Lopes) I'd be happy to plug. Not sure why I don't
find more Latin jazz, other than that very little finds its way to me.
I have several A-list Latin pop records (Shakira, Ricardo Lemvo, Fumaça
Preta).

I should also note that I've been counting Jenny Scheinman's The
Littlest Prisoner as a non-jazz album (where it's currently number
two on my list). Obviously would have made the top-ten here had I gone
that way.

Not sure when the results will be posted, but I'll be hosting the
ballots again this year, so I'll probably know more before it happens.

Some preliminary stats: 60 new A-list albums, 124 new B+(***) [HM],
368 other albums for total of 552; 10 old A-list, 5 old B+(***) [HM],
11 other for total of 26. Didn't find many late-graded 2013 albums:
23 (3 new + 1 old A-list).

In 2012 (at roughly this time), I had 556 new jazz records (similar,
but with 80 ungraded in queue, vs. 15 now), and 36 old records (plus 2
undgraded), so the falloff this year is less than I expected. (Not sure
about 2013, as I don't seem to have the data readily available.)

I also have a request from Sergio Piccarilli to vote in El Intruso's
"8th Creative Music Critics Poll 2014." I've voted in it before, but
procrastinated last year and missed the deadline date (January 5th
this year).

It will be a pleasure for us to know your opinion about your
favorites in these categories (no more than three choices in each
category)

Musician of the year: Anthony Braxton, William Parker,
Ivo Perelman

Newcomer Musician: Ben Flocks, James Brandon Lewis

Group of the year: Mostly Other People Do the Killing,
Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, Angles 9

Names were mostly plucked off this year's top album list, with a
few reminders from last year and a few more names from memory --
certainly doesn't constitute any serious, deep thinking: pretty sure
everyone mentioned deserves mentioning, but many of those unmentioned
don't deserve the slight. Several slots could have gone much deeper:
drums, bass, alto sax, tenor sax, piano, trumpet. I dropped my number
two and four albums somewhat arbitrarily.

Daily Log

Matt Rice asked:

So, Xgau gave Sunny Sweeney's 2011 album a HM in the latest EW, but
he hasn't reviewed the new one yet. Could he be planning to review it
alongside Miranda?

I replied:

No inside info here, but I don't think Bob *plans* on reviewing HMs
-- otherwise he'd come up with a lot more. They just sort of fall out
of his search for A-list albums. Sweeney's new album is almost exactly
as good as her 2011 album (although I'd give it a small edge for
"Everybody Else Can Kiss My Ass"). The new one, "Provoked," came out
on Aug. 5, so if he thought it was worth covering -- factor in that it
got much less hype than the 2011 album, and that the 2011 one only
wound up with one star -- he could have worked it into a column headed
by Angaleena Presley, whose album came out on Oct. 14. (The one bit of
inside info I do have is that he's been sitting on the Sweeney squib
for more than two years, waiting for a place to use it.) The more
interesting question is why he didn't include Lambert along with
Presley? Without inside info you never know what omissions mean. For
instance, the one I wonder about is the 2nd Parkay Quarts EP, which I
like better than the covered one. It came out so close to the review
date he may not have processed it yet, but who knows?

Actually, to divulge some more inside info, the first record Bob
offered to play when I visited him in April was Old 97's (Most
Messed Up), and after I said I've heard it, the next one he
offered was Lambert's. I doubt he would have offered it had he not
already liked it. To date he hasn't run either Old 97's or Lambert
or several other albums he is known to like (e.g., Withered Hand
and Wussy, which finished 1-2 in Odyshape's mid-year critics poll --
a group much closer to his taste than I am; he's also mentioned
Kool AD and Azealia Banks as possible top-ten records).

Music Week

My 2014 jazz stocks are dwindling: the pending list is down to 12
records, including two of last week's Clean Feeds. (The package was,
by the way, a little light, with only four of eight new titles. Hope
they split the shipment rather than start to cut me off.) Beyond that,
there's no one I recognize: many singers, at least one flute record.
(I've been putting off dealing with 2015 titles -- I have 10 of them,
and a few of them are more promising.) I'll square away my jazz ballot
sometime in the next few days.

I continue to revise the current
jazz and
non-jazz lists --
currently I have 58 A-list records on the jazz side, 56 on the other.
(By the way, I still need to rewrite the intros and factor the late
2013 releases into those lists. Also need to work on the 2% lists.)
I've been looking at available EOY lists, and I've started to count
them up. The legend is
here, and the new records
count is
here. Almost 40 lists
counted to date, most of the early ones coming from UK/Europe (main
resources for me:
Acclaimed Music Groups,
Ilxor; still waiting for
Large Hearted Boy; also see the tabulations at
AOTY).

Previous metacritic files have included review grades as well as EOY
lists, so I get some idea of how the year is shaping up well ahead of
list season. This year I just started the file this past week, and the
only data in it are EOY lists, so it started out really skewed when
five of the first six lists were from UK mags and record stores (the
latter often go 100 deep, since they have that more to sell; the mags
usually draw the line around 50, which is about where most serious
fans draw the line between A- and B+). The first time I noticed from
those lists was the near complete shutout of US rap/r&b albums.
For comparison, in 2013 US rap/r&b finished (and I'll throw in
the usually higher Pazz & Jop finish in brackets):

Kanye West: Yeezus [1]

Chance the Rapper: Acid Jazz [5]

Janelle Monae: The Electric Lady [8]

Danny Brown: Old [27]

Earl Sweatshirt: Doris [42]

El-P/Killer Mike: Run the Jewels [22]

Drake: Nothing Was the Same [18]

Pusha T: My Name Is My Name [30]

Beyoncé: Beyoncé [4]

ASAP Rocky: Long.Live.ASAP [123]

Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP 2 [58]

DJ Rashad: Double Cup [73]

Charles Bradley: Victim of Love [131]

Valerie June: Pushin'; Against a Stone [61]

Also finishing P&J top 100:

Ka: The Night's Gambit [69]

Ghostface Killah/Adrian Younge: Twelve Reasons to Die [91]

The Uncluded: Hokey Fright [75]

That strikes me as a pretty typical year, and while it's helped by
a few big names (Kanye West, Janelle Monae, Drake, Beyonce, Eminem) it
includes a fair number of names you probably hadn't heard of before
the year started (Chance the Rapper, Danny Brown, Earl Sweatshirt,
etc.). The shutout of the first few lists has opened up a crack, but
still this is looking like the year critics forgot about black music.
Currently all I see:

Flying Lotus: You're Dead

Neneh Cherry: Blank Project

El-P/Killer Mike: Run the Jewels 2

Freddie Gibbs and Madlib: Pińata

Shabazz Palaces: Lese Majesty

La Roux: Trouble in Paradise

Pharrell Williams: Girl

That's less than half as many records, and some of those are pretty
marginal. (Cherry grew up in England and Scandinavia, is on a Norwegian
record label, and isn't really hip-hop.) Nor do I see much in the wings.
Christgau predicts that Black Portland will "finish P&J"
(i.e., top 40), but that record has only one mention so far (31 on
Rolling Stone's list). Nor have any of Christgau's other A-list
hip-hop records this year garnered even a single mention (Atmosphere,
Jason Derulo, Homeboy Sandman, Roots -- I could also add Babyface/Toni
Braxton, Iggy Azalea [not US but not FKA Twigs either], Kool A.D., and
with one mention Azealia Banks). From my list, aside from Pharrell only
Statik Selektah has one mention, while Mursday, Green Seed, Grieves,
and Serengeti are shut out. I dug up yet another list, XXL's
25 best from mid-year, and it, too, fared very poorly: only 3 (of 25)
records there had been mentioned (at least when I checked; may be
one or two more now).

So just because Kanye West sat this year out doesn't mean the records
aren't there. What's lacking is the recognition. I suppose one reason
that bugs me more than usual is news like Ferguson and the elections.
Still, when I shared my early findings with Christgau, he wrote back:
"And in case you didn't know, the sites you aggregate are generally
speaking black-music clueless, stupidly anti-pop, heedlessly prog, and
fatally faddish. . . . PJ will be better." Sure, because it is even
more US-biased than my early list returns have been UK/Europe-biased,
and because it still polls a lot of newspaper critics (who generally
have to write about popular music once in a while, or at least
be flexible enough to do so -- something not required of bloggers).
But looking at the data, I have no reason to overestimate the smarts
and taste of the lists: after all, the current top-10 includes four
B/B- records by my counting (FKA Twigs, Beck, Sharon Van Etten, Mac
DeMarco), and three more not enough better to actually recommend
(Caribou, Damon Albarn, Future Islands).

By the way, I didn't get around to tweeting on the Young Thug records --
for one thing, don't have much to say -- but I have warmed somewhat on
Black Portland.

New records rated this week:

Damon Albarn: Everyday Robots (2014, Parlophone): threatening to turn into an old geezer, tries to make the best of it by singing like Robert Wyatt [r]: B+(*)

Daily Log

Miscellaneous notes:

Iggy Azalea: Reclassified (2014, Def Jam): [needed to
sort out what's new from what's reissued here. in effect, you get a new
5-cut EP + a 7-cut "greatest hits," which may or may not be a good deal.]
B+(**) [rhapsody]

Young Thug: I Came From Nothing 1 & 2 (2011 [2014],
Music Unlimited): [wound up splitting Rhapsody's compilation into the
two constituent mixtapes, and reviewing them separately. lost "Intro"
from "1"; "2" was somewhat reordered. both were graded as below.]
B+(*) [rhapsody]